Corporate media may not have all the same goals as MAGA Republicans, but they share the same strategy: Fear works.
Appeals to fear have an advantage over other kinds of messages in that they stimulate the deeper parts of our brains, those associated with fight-or-flight responses. Fear-based messages tend to circumvent our higher reasoning faculties and demand our attention, because evolution has taught our species to react strongly and quickly to things that are dangerous.
This innate human tendency has long been noted by the media industry (Psychology Today, 12/27/21), resulting in the old press adage, “If it bleeds, it leads.” Politicians, too, are aware of this brain hack (Conversation, 1/11/19)—and no one relies on evoking fear more than once-and-future President Donald Trump (New York Times, 10/1/24).
This is why coverage of issues in this election season have dovetailed so well with the Trump campaign’s lines of attack against the Biden/Harris administration—even in outlets that are editorially opposed, at least ostensibly, to Trumpism.
Scary issues
Corporate media rarely point, as this New York Times graphic (7/24/24) did, that crime has fallen dramatically since 1991, and continued to fall during the Biden/Harris administration.
Take immigration, a topic that could easily be covered as a human interest story, with profiles of people struggling to reach a better life against stark challenges. Instead, corporate media tend to report on it as a “border crisis,” with a “flood” of often-faceless migrants whose very existence is treated as a threat (FAIR.org, 5/24/21).
This is the news business deciding that fear attracts and holds an audience better than empathy does. And that business model would be undermined by reporting that consistently acknowledged that the percentage of US residents who are undocumented workers rose only slightly under the Biden administration, from 3.2% in 2019 to 3.3% in 2022 (the latest year available)—and is down from a peak of 4.0% in 2007 (Pew, 7/22/24; FAIR.org, 10/16/24).
With refugees treated as a scourge in centrist and right-wing media alike, is it any wonder that Trump can harvest votes by promising to do something about this menace? Eleven percent of respondents in NBC‘s exit poll said that immigration was the single issue that mattered most in casting their vote; 90% of the voters in that group voted for Trump.
Crime is another fear-based issue that Trump hammered on in his stump speech. “Have you seen what’s been happening?” he said of Washington, DC (Washington Post, 3/11/24). “Have you seen people being murdered? They come from South Carolina to go for a nice visit and they end up being murdered, shot, mugged, beat up.”
Trump could make such hyperbolic claims sound credible because corporate media had paved the way with alarmist coverage of crime (FAIR.org, 11/10/22). It was rare to see a report that acknowledged, as an infographic in the New York Times (7/24/24) did, that crime has dropped considerably from 2020 to 2024, when it hit a four-decade low (FAIR.org, 7/26/24).
‘Classic fear campaign’
Republicans spent so much on transphobic ads (Truthout, 11/5/04) because they knew voters had been primed by media to fear trans people.
Trans people, improbably enough, are another favorite subject of fear stories for media and MAGA alike. “Republicans spent nearly $215 million on network TV ads vilifying transgender people this election cycle,” Truthout (11/5/04) reported, with Trump spending “more money on anti-trans ads than on ads concerning housing, immigration and the economy combined.”
Journalist Erin Reed (PBS NewsHour, 11/2/24) described this as “a classic fear campaign”:
The purpose of a fear campaign is to distract you from issues that you normally care about by making you so afraid of a group of people, of somebody like me, for instance, that you’re willing to throw everything else away because you’re scared.
Transphobia has been a major theme in right-wing media, but has been a prominent feature of centrist news coverage as well, particularly in the New York Times (FAIR.org, 5/11/23). Rather than reporting centered on trans people, which could have humanized a marginalized demographic that’s unfamiliar to many readers, the Times chose instead to present trans youth in particular as a threat—focusing on “whether trans people are receiving too many rights, and accessing too much medical care, too quickly,” as FAIR noted.
‘Alienating voters’ with ‘progressive agenda’
The New York Times (11/6/24) didn’t want people to vote for Trump—but its reporting contributed to the perception that “an infusion of immigrants” and “a porous southern border” were among “the nation’s urgent problems.”
But rather than examining their own role in promoting the irrational fears that were the lifeblood of the successful Trump campaign, corporate media focused on their perennial electoral scapegoat: the left (FAIR.org, 11/5/21). The New York Times editorial board (11/6/24) quickly diagnosed the Democrats’ problem (aside from sticking with Biden too long):
The party must also take a hard look at why it lost the election…. It took too long to recognize that large swaths of their progressive agenda were alienating voters, including some of the most loyal supporters of their party. And Democrats have struggled for three elections now to settle on a persuasive message that resonates with Americans from both parties who have lost faith in the system—which pushed skeptical voters toward the more obviously disruptive figure, even though a large majority of Americans acknowledge his serious faults. If the Democrats are to effectively oppose Mr. Trump, it must be not just through resisting his worst impulses but also by offering a vision of what they would do to improve the lives of all Americans and respond to anxieties that people have about the direction of the country and how they would change it.
It’s a mind-boggling contortion of logic. The Times doesn’t say which aspects of Democrats’ “progressive agenda” were so alienating to people. But the media all agreed—based largely on exit polls—that Republicans won because of the economy and immigration. The “persuasive message” and “vision…to improve the lives of all Americans” that Democrats failed to offer was pretty clearly an economic one. Which is exactly what progressives in the party have been pushing for the last decade: Medicare for All, a wealth tax, a living minimum wage, etc. In other words, if the Democrats had adopted a progressive agenda, it likely would have been their best shot at offering that vision to improve people’s lives.
More likely, the paper was referring to “identity politics,” which has been a media scapegoat for years—indeed, pundits roundly blamed Hillary Clinton’s loss to Trump on identity politics (or “political correctness”) (FAIR.org, 11/20/16). Then, as now, it was an accusation without evidence.
‘Democratic self-sabotage’
The Washington Post‘s Matt Bai (11/6/24) thought Trump’s anti-trans ads resonated with “a lot of traditionally Democratic voters who feel like the party is consumed with cultural issues.”
At the Washington Post, columnist Matt Bai‘s answer (11/6/24) to “Where Did Kamala Harris’s Campaign Go Wrong?” was, in part, that “Democrats have dug themselves into a hole on cultural issues and identity politics,” naming Trump’s transphobic ads as evidence of that. (In a Post roundup of columnist opinions, Bai declared that Harris “couldn’t outrun her party’s focus on trans rights and fighting other forms of oppression.”)
At the same time, Bai acknowledged that he does “think of Trump as being equally consumed with identity—just a different kind.” Fortunately for Republicans, Bai and his fellow journalists never take their kind of identity politics as worth highlighting (FAIR.org, 9/18/24).
George Will (10/6/24), a Never Trumper at the Washington Post, chalked up Harris’s loss largely to “the Democratic Party’s self-sabotage, via identity politics (race, gender), that made Harris vice president.”
Bret Stephens (10/6/24), one of the New York Times‘ set of Never Trumpers, likewise pointed a finger at Democrats’ supposed tilt toward progressives and “identity.” Much like other pundits, Stephens argued that “the politics of today’s left is heavy on social engineering according to group identity.”
Of the Harris campaigns’ “tactical missteps,” Stephens’ first complaint was “her choice of a progressive running mate”—Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz. He also accused the party of a “dismissiveness toward the moral objections many Americans have to various progressive causes.” Here he mentioned trans kids’ rights, DEI seminars and “new terminology that is supposed to be more inclusive,” none of which Harris vocally embraced.
But underlying all of these arguments is a giant fundamental problem: It’s simply a fantasy (advanced repeatedly by Republicans) that Harris was running on identity politics, or as a radical progressive. News articles (e.g., Slate, 9/5/24; Forbes, 11/5/24) regularly acknowledged that Harris, in contrast to Hillary Clinton, for instance, shied away from centering her gender or ethnic background, or appealing to identity in her campaign.
‘Wary and alienated’
In a rare instance of actually listening to left-wing voices, a New York Times article (10/24/24) focused on pre-election warnings that Harris “risks chilling Democratic enthusiasm by alienating progressives and working-class voters.”
The Times‘ own reporting made Harris’s distancing from progressive politics perfectly clear not two weeks ago, in an article (10/24/24) headlined, “As Harris Courts Republicans, the Left Grows Wary and Alienated.” In a rare example of the Times centering a left perspective in a political article, reporters Nicholas Nehamas and Erica L. Green wrote:
In making her closing argument this month, Ms. Harris has campaigned four times with Liz Cheney, the Republican former congresswoman, stumping with her more than with any other ally. She has appeared more in October with the billionaire Mark Cuban than with Shawn Fain, the president of the United Auto Workers and one of the nation’s most visible labor leaders.
She has centered her economic platform on middle-class issues like small businesses and entrepreneurship rather than raising the minimum wage, a deeply held goal of many Democrats that polls well across the board. She has taken a harder-line stance on the border than has any member of her party in a generation and has talked more prominently about owning a Glock than about combating climate change. She has not broken from President Biden on the war Israel is waging in Gaza.
Kamala Harris did not run as a progressive, either in terms of economic policy or identity politics. But to a corporate media that largely complemented, rather than countered, Trump’s fear-based narratives on immigrants, trans people and crime, blaming the left is infinitely more appealing than recognizing their own culpability.
It won’t be just the corpress blaming “the left”
Liberals and “progressives” have pissed on anyone portside of them for months, and will continue the bash fest to keep radical ideas from gaining a foothold in the face of this latest fiasco.
Is this article for real? The MSM media was in the tank for Harris over months and frankly dug their own grave with arguably absurdly bias Trumpster election coverage. Their headlines alone reveal how they served as de facto surrogates for the Harris campaign. This article is intellectually dishonest as she was an anointed and failed candidate for a host of different reasons. Every single demographic group moved towards the Trumpster views relative to the two prior elections. Hell he apparently even won the popular vote. To be clear I didn’t vote for either of them (Jill Stein got my vote). No it wasn’t the hate, gender, black or brown card – Biden sucked and she sucked even more.
More so ,,, the Democrats spent $1 Billion and lost. Harris’s shorten campaign raised TWICE ($1.2 billion) as much as Trump’s longer campaign but still lost. Her donors numbered in the millions, many contributed 6, 7 and 8 figures. She had ALL the Hollywood celebs, the vast majority of the music stars and producers. Countless sports figures were all in for her too. But in the end it didn’t matter.
One centrist Democrat, Rep. Tom Suozzi of New York – who won – blamed the party’s lean into political correctness for why they lost the election. “Democrats need to focus more on issues Americans care about, like wages, benefits, inflation and less on being politically correct” he said in a press release also posted on X. “We failed as a party to respond to the Republican weaponization of anarchy on college campuses, de-fund the police, biological boys playing in girls’ sports, and a general attack on traditional values.” A robust post mortem is necessary for the entire nomination process of the Democrats.
It seems strange for the writer to claim that the Dems didn’t campaign on identity politics, given that such a disorientating, anti-socialism swing has been evident in much of the centre and even the Left for decades. Harris used her gender and racial identities as the central reasons for anyone to give her a vote, and avoided discussion of policies at every possible opportunity. The Trump campaign got down and dirty, talking policies constantly and meeting working class people all over the country.
To point out just one glaring error (of many) in this incoherent Democrat apologia: the Democrats ran on “fear” just as much as Republicans did.
Wasn’t Trump about to be “dictator for life” and end US “democracy”?
Wasn’t fear of what Trump “would surely do” to Palestinians, immigrants, & other marginalized people used as leverage to distract from the genocide, deportations, and other harms currently being carried out by Democrats?
This article is Bull Spit. Democrats and Harris wished the election was about jobs and abortion. Trump’s win showed it was all about outrageous prices and failed policies. The farther left or right you go, the more it all looks the same. Just saying the quiet part out loud.
Legacy TV networks and newspapers, once the gatekeepers of political discourse, are shrinking in influence as Americans turn to podcasts, TikTok, X, Instagram and many others places for their information. Forget running as a progressive as Harris made numerous strategic mistakes, foremost in that, no one knew what she believed in or stood for (anything)? Tactically she had banked on social issues like abortion tipping voters in her favor, but it was the transgender debate—already a flashpoint in sports and schools—that emerged as a potent late-campaign weapon against Harris. I hated both of them frankly and the country was denied actual and meaningful change.
What a shambolic article. Trump’s victory is not just a consequence of his ability to manipulate the media or populist appeal. It is a systematic failure of the Dems to understand the broad mood of the country, it’s shifting demographics and it’s financial frustrations. It is a failure of vision, empathy and courage. Regular people hate being spoken down to by the rich, entitled Hollywood celebs. I honestly fear the Dems are doomed to repeat the same mistakes again.
In a moments of crisis, people yearn for strong, simple solutions. This is where the Democratic Party has repeatedly faltered. They have become overly complex, bogged down in policy minutiae, identity groups and nuance while Republicans capitalize on a simple, emotively narrative’s.
This nonsense of promising to protect the “soul” of America, even if that means subverting its democratic foundations is nuts as it is for the Pubs too. People’s fears — fear of losing their identity, their culture, their economic security, etc, etc. The Democratic response? A disjointed series of policies, some of which might be beneficial but often presented as esoteric, academic like fixes for problems that feel very distant to the average working voter.
Trump, for all his flaws and authoritarian tendencies, speaks directly to people’s concerns and fears. He uses raw and in your face language that resonates with people who feel ignored, overlooked, or demonized as the MSM is seemingly lost in the weeds and totally critical.
This is not a crisis that can be solved by continued identity politics or incremental policy shifts. This is a moment that requires the reinvention of a political vision that reconnects with the forgotten middle class, the working poor, disillusioned youth and marginalized communities. The dem’s must speak to the issues that matter most: the rising cost of living, access to quality healthcare, crime, economic mobility, and a future that feels within reach. Until all of that is done, until they articulate a vision that resonates emotionally and intellectually, Trump – all things being equal – will simply continue to expand his coalition.
As I write this, there are 8 comments to this article comprising at least 7 different hypotheses on how the article got it wrong and how the Democrats actually blew it.
I think the headline is correct – media blame the left – and the article as far as it goes. But that is only one aspect of how the static-y, entropic mediascape has altered the shape of political discourse, as illustrated by the dimensionally additive nature of the comments.
You lost most heavily on the economy, and your response is “if only we had promised to increase taxes and drain entitlements.”
Keep telling yourself this kind of nonsense. Tell yourself identitarianism is a bogeyman of the right. It’s not. It is a philosophy at the core of the Democratic Party ideology and electoral strategy. As the party created a tent to accommodate every small group under the sun, it has driven millions of actual anti-racists away.
You adopted racialism as your worldview and ideology. Surprise, surprise! That leads to racism, tribalism, division, and hatred. You even managed to reinvigorate the Oldest Hatred, here in the United States. Congratulations.
Keep talking down to everyone. Tell people of Latin American ancestry you’re going to colonize their language and rename them to your preferred proper noun. When you ruin the economy and fail to secure the country, blame Latinos, black men, white men, white women, and the “uneducated.” Blame gays and lesbians for being antitrans. When you go down the line far enough, you’ll start to hopefully see it’s not racism or sexism or xenophobia that has sunk you: it’ is you. This was a complete rejection of your project. Stop blaming minorities for your failures.
And while you blame the “uneducated” for being unable to afford $80,000 per year higher education, you destroy the education system from K through PhD. Our elite universities, with well over 90% of faculty Democrats, in tatters due to indoctrination and ignorance of history. I say this having a more prestigious and rigorous education than you. You seem to misunderstand the role of education in society. Education exists to provide us tools for living a good life and to contribute to society at large. Having a “better” education does not make you a better, or even smarter person, nor does it make your policies superior. The most destructive and failed policies for minorities have been pushed and implemented by highly educated progressives. Even Nicolas Kristoff recently admitted that noble progressive policies, while well-intentioned, seem to only make things worse. Believing everyone is dumber than you accounts for a big chunk of your blind spot.
But you’ve ultimately missed the one thing staring you in the face: illiberalism. Not Trump’s — yours. Liberals were considered interchangeable with Democrats for decades. Over time, liberal came to mean “leftist.” Then “liberal” was replaced with “progressive.” Now, liberals—that is, people who support freedom, equality, and equal rights—are unwelcome in the Democratic Party. Democrats have emulated the CCP censorship apparatus, and have been caught red-handed suppressing politically unfavorable stories. I’ve only seen anything like this while in China. Democratic media and lawmakers openly describe free speech as a threat to democracy, while using “free speech” as a shield for antisemitic intimidation and violence.
Your enemy is not some great unwashed. It is you. You have become everything tolerant, liberal, and open-minded Americans abhor. They use to be called liberals. You now call them Republicans. What does that tell you about the Democrats now?
Trump would have won my vote if he actually did promise to execute the Cheneys.
Biden kissed Saudi butt to get gas prices down, the public likes that. Then they backed off right before the election, grumbling about government change takes off. Their Masters decided it’s time to lose the election. Progressives are too thick in identity politics to have any analysis on this whatsoever.